"Keep the pot boiling": What new research says about PLA incursions into India -- China Boss update 12.16.22
Update -- *China Boss will break for the holiday season Monday, Dec. 19, 2022 - Friday, Jan. 6, 2023.
What happened.
Two reports of India-China border clashes emerged last week: one relating to a recent encounter that resulted in minor injuries, and the other to a “stick and brick battle” which occurred last year.
“Indian and Chinese troops clashed in the northeast Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh last week,” Bloomberg reported. It’s “the first such encounter between the neighbors since 2020,” news staff said.
Bloomberg:
The incident took place on Dec. 9 and led to minor injuries on both sides, the officials said, asking not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. Both sides have since disengaged from the area, they said, adding military commanders have met to discuss the matter. The officials gave no details on the nature of the fighting or the number of troops involved.
A spokesperson for India’s Ministry of Defense declined to comment. There was no immediate comment or confirmation from Beijing of the Indian account of Friday’s events. The incident has been widely reported in local Indian media Monday.
But even as the news went to press, CNN released video showing Indian and Chinese troops hitting one another “with sticks and bricks” in a previously unreported battle that, experts say, took place in September 2021.
CNN:
In the video – which CNN cannot independently verify – troops from both countries are seen on mountainous terrain, surrounded by green hills apparently untouched by winter. Though they’re separated by barbed wire, the footage appears to show Indian troops beating the Chinese soldiers with makeshift weapons, including what look like wooden sticks and metal pipes. In several instances, Indian soldiers can be seen throwing bricks or stones.
Many of the Chinese soldiers, gathered on the other side of the wire, also appear to be holding long sticks or batons.
Eventually the barbed wire collapses and the Indian soldiers move forward, prompting the Chinese troops to jump over a short stone wall and leave the area, to cheers from the Indian side.
Why it matters.
PLA incursions are strategically planned
A new study led by researchers from Northwestern University, Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Defense Academy found that "Chinese incursions across India’s west and central borders are not independent, random incidents that happen by mistake," a Northwestern University press release said.
"Instead, these incursions are part of a strategically planned, coordinated effort in order to gain permanent control of disputed border areas,” it added.
Northwestern University:
“By studying the number of incursions that occurred in the west and middle sectors over time, it became obvious, statistically, that these incursions are not random,” said Northwestern’s V.S. Subrahmanian, the study’s senior author. “The probability of randomness is very low, which suggests to us that it’s a coordinated effort. When we looked at the eastern sector, however, there is much weaker evidence for coordination. Settling border disputes in specific areas could be an important first step in a step-by-step resolution of the entire conflict.”
Subrahmanian, a computer scientist, and the rest of his team built a data-set of Chinese incursions into disputed areas from 2005–2020 with the help of well-documented records from multiple independent media outlets. After gathering the data, they also noticed that the number of PLA incursions has been, on average, rising since 2006, even though “game-theory analysis indicates that only the incursions in Aksai Chin are part of a coordinated effort.”
Northwestern University:
Building on insights from game theory, the researchers predict that China is trying to establish permanent control over Aksai Chin by allocating more troops for a longer period of time than India.
“China grabs a little bit of territory and then a little bit more until India accepts that it’s Chinese territory,” Subrahmanian said. “There is a saying: ‘Keep the pot boiling but don’t let it boil over.’ China takes small pieces of land, but keeps it under the threshold of where India would counter-attack. But, over time, it becomes a bigger piece of land.”
To read the study, Rising tension in the Himalayas: A geospatial analysis of Chinese border incursions into India, click here.
Watch on YouTube.
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*China Boss will break for the holiday season Monday, Dec. 19, 2022 - Friday, Jan. 6, 2023. See you in 2023!